MUSIC

For fans of: Sessa, Caetano, Veloso, Alabaster DePlume, Bala Desejo London has a bright new Brazilian talent in town, who goes by the name of MOMO. Not so new, actually. One of the recent generation of artists influenced by the Brazilian classics, from 1970s tropicália, Os Mutantes and Milton Nascimento. MOMO. releases his 7th album Gira, on Batov Records bringing together some very special musicians and guests from London’s bustling and hustling jazz community, with fellow Brazilian artists, recorded and cut to tape at East London’s Total Refreshment Center. A journeying collaboration which effortlessly swings, guided by Marcelo Frota’s soft yet reassuringly familiar vocal, with ruminative and explorative brass twists, Gira was recorded with friends and guests including Alabaster DePlume on tenor sax (in whose band Marcelo toured), Jessica Lauren on keys, Tamar Osborn on baritone sax, Nick ‘Emanative’ Woodmansey on drums, Carwyn Ellis of Rio 18 fame on piano, Magnus Mehta from Penya on percussion and Caetano Malta on bass. Gira is MOMO.’s eighth album yet his first recorded in London. After a musical odyssey that took him from his home of Rio de Janeiro to Angola, Michigan, Chicago, Spain and Lisbon, MOMO. now calls London his home, where he lives with his young family, and whose creative spirit has inspired him for the last three years. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the new album marks a real departure. His debut from 2006, A Estética do Rabisco was named one of the best albums of the year by the Chicago Reader and set Marcelo’s musical path in motion. His singer-songwriting talents have already earned him plaudits from royalty like Patti Smith and David Byrne and he was invited to participate in A Tribute to Caetano to mark the 70th birthday of Brazilian musical legend, Caetano Veloso. Inspired by seeing his young daughter breaking out in dance to some music at home, MOMO. thought, "I would love to make an album that she could dance to" and Gira was conceived. In recruiting his new London friends as collaborators, MOMO. rekindled the fun and feel of his earliest recordings in Rio, when he would invite people over to his studio and "just see what happened." And the best way to capture such spontaneous energy was to record Gira live. In this case, at London’s Total Refreshment Centre, a creative hub that is also a concert space, artist workshop and studio which has become a beacon for jazz music since its ‘warehouse’ inception in 2012 by promoter Lex Blondin. The title Gira means to move. "It made sense to start with the grooves, the patterns, then start filling in the melodies,” MOMO. explains. So drummer Nick Woodmansey, leader of the genre-melting jazz collective Emanative, along with co-founder of Penya, percussionist Magnus Mehta, and fellow Brazilian immigrant and bassist Caetano Malta, combine to anchor the resulting effortless grooves, while other contributors then spark the little touches of magic in its wake. Alabaster DePlume's saxophone adds an exotic touch to Oqueeei. Francesca Ter-Berg's cello adds a startling dimension to two of the longer improvisations, the superb opener Pára and A Walk in the Park. Rosie Turton's brash, brittle trombone embellishes Summer Interlude and the first single, Jão. Inspired by the early work of Tim Maia, the album's shortest song pictures a guy in a gafieira (where people go to dance to samba in couples), MOMO. explains, "just dancing and having fun." Fun is a hallmark of Gira. "You come, you play, we have fun," MOMO. told his collaborators. You can hear it so clearly on that simmering eight-minute-plus opener Pára, chosen as the second single: the way MOMO. savours its memorable vocal refrain like a tasty morsel while Jessica Lauren's keyboard vamp takes root and Tamar Osborn's deliciously resonant baritone sax echoes Ronnie Cuber’s trademark work for Eddie Palmieri on Harlem River Drive. Fun, too, is what MOMO. had in collaborating with his old friend Wado on the lyrics to six of the album's 10 songs. The third and final single Rio, for example, is a tribute to the city where MOMO. grew up and first learned to play the guitar. Appropriately, Carwyn Ellis of Rio 18 fame was invited to play electric piano and add his touch to the song. The album’s finale, the focus and title track, is ”like folkloric music, like a baião but with a London vibe.” Gira is a new departure for MOMO. While previous albums have always started with guitar and voice, Gira begins with the groove – yet succeeds sublimely in balancing this new emphasis on spontaneous improvisation and songwriting. “Life brought me to London and I think I’ve made my lightest album; it could only have been created here." When Brazil meets London, you can't help but move to the groove.

Continuing their exploration of São Tomé and Príncipe with DJ Tom B., Les Disques Bongo Joe proudly announces the release of África Negra Anthology Vol. 2. We've carefully selected and remastered 13 standout tracks for this volume, digitized from studio tapes by their tour manager. The album includes a booklet with updated liner notes and vintage photos of the group. África Negra, established in the early 1970s by Horacio and Emidio Pontes, is São Tomé and Príncipe's most renowned musical group. Their blend of Puxa and Rumba, infused with Leonildo Barros' guitar riffs, Armando Tito's bass lines, and vibrant percussion, gained them recognition beyond the archipelago. This volume offers a glimpse into their musical journey, featuring unreleased sessions from 1979 and 1990, showcasing lead vocalists like João Seria and Sergio Fonseca. Reformed around Leonildo Barros and Antonio Menezes since 2008, the group has released three albums since 2012 and resumed touring in recent years, with João since 2014. Their performances continue to captivate audiences with energetic rhythms, graceful harmonies, socially charged poetry, and distinctive dance moves, supported by their Lisbon-based tour manager, Afonso Simoes (Filho Unico), who facilitated the excavation of these tracks. Since the tragic passing of Joao Seria on May 4, 2023, followed by national funeral honors, 90s lead vocalist Sergio Fonseca has rejoined the group, accompanied by Iju, a renowned younger São Toméan vocalist, delivering an engaging show. Pacheco, known for his devastating bass riffs and unique style of playing, has also returned, having lived in Cape Verde since 1987 and recently resettled in São Tomé. This anthology is dedicated to the memory of General João Seria, Gabriel João, Sep 1, 1949 - May 4, 2023.

Paradise Cinema is a project led by multi-instrumentalist Jack Wyllie (Portico Quartet/Szun Waves) with contributions from Khadim Mbaye, Tons Sambe and Laurence Pike. The first, eponymous, Paradise Cinema record, released in 2020, was recorded in Dakar and featured the dense rhythms of Mbalax music combining with Wyllie’s textural saxophone and synth playing. New album ‘returning, dream’ was created in London by Wyllie with additional recordings from Dakar and Sydney. While Wyllie’s other projects move between tight-knit electronica, widescreen minimalism and improvised ambient sounds, ‘returning, dream’ contains nods to Jon Hassell, Terry Riley, Don Cherry and Midori Takada as well as more contemporary electronic, ambient and non-western music and even draws inspiration from physics and science fiction.

Multi-instrumentalist Jack Wyllie (Portico Quartet/Szun Waves) presents his new project Paradise Cinema. It was recorded in Dakar, Senegal in collaboration with mbalax percussionists Khadim Mbaye (saba drums) and Tons Sambe (tama drums). The impressionistic and dream-like quality of ‘Paradise Cinema’ is a stunningly effective realisation of Wyllie’s experience, in a hypnagogic state of aural consciousness: “I had a lot of nights in Dakar, when the music around the city would go on until 6am. I could hear this from my bed at night and it all blended together, in what felt like an early version of the record.” Atmospherically ‘Paradise Cinema’ is vaporous and enigmatic, but also percussive; existing in a paradoxical sound-space that’s amorphous, yet still purposeful, serene, but propulsive and aesthetically sharp. Khadim Mbaye and Tons Sambe, provide the rhythmic backbone of the record. There are traditional elements of mbalax rhythm, but it is often deconstructed or played at tempos outside of the tradition, so while it hints at a location it occupies a space outside of any specific region. ‘Paradise Cinema’ is also informed by notions of hauntology – a philosophical concept originating in the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida – on possible futures that were never realised and how directions taken in the past can haunt the present. On the album’s title Wyllie comments, “there are a handful of old cinemas in Dakar – these big modernist buildings dotted around the city built around independence. They’re old and derelict now, but feel to me like monuments to that period, when the city was flooded with utopian ideas about its potential futures.” As such it sits closely to 4th world music – situated in an imagined culture and time that never came to pass. And while it contains rhythmic references to Senegal it combines these elements with ambient and minimalist music to produce a sound that sits outside of any tradition. Setting the tone for the long-player’s themes is the optimism-driven, balmy beauty of ‘Possible Futures’, where rich-toned drums throb and levitate in a stratospheric ether. Like a time-lapse video of plants in bloom, ‘It Will Be Summer Soon’ is the sound of anticipation and growth. Rhythmically it flickers and flutters, evoking rainfall, or the blurred wings of a bird in in flight. Casamance moves through field recordings drifting in and out of focus, beats pitched-down low and unfurling saxophone, whilst the ambient ‘Utopia’ was made mainly with processed saxophone and suggests a longing for a perfect world. Galloping percussion juxtaposes with a wistful mood on ‘Liberté’ – a title that references a derelict modernist cinema in Dakar of the same name – a hauntological landmark, made more poignant by the its name being part of the French national motto. Tying into the cover artwork, Jack explains, “the ‘Digital Palm is a telecommunications mast disguised as a palm tree in central Dakar. As a modern piece of technology that on first glance looks natural, it mirrors the combination of modern and acoustic elements.” Perhaps eliciting a time that never came, or maybe still in hope of it yet to come, ‘Eternal Spring’ concludes the LP’s otherworldly beauty with hypnotic drums powering a subtly-building, sparkling and powerful crescendo. Jack Wyllie is a musician, composer, electronic producer who draws on influences of jazz, ambient, and the trance-inducing repetition of minimalism. Wyllie performs and records in Portico Quartet, Szun Waves (with Luke Abbott and Laurence Pike) and Xoros. He has also collaborated with Charles Hayward, Adrian Corker and Chris Sharkey and released on Ninja Tune, Babel, Leaf, Real World and Gondwana. Khadim Mbaye and Toms Sambe play in various mbalax groups in Dakar. Khadim has also toured internationally with Cheikh Lo.

Batov Records presents ‘Nijerusalem’, a groundbreaking collaboration between Nigerien synth pioneer Mamman Sani and Berlin-based electronic artist Tropikal Camel. Mamman Sani's electronic organ music, first recorded in 1978, made him a national hero in Niger, led to him writing the Niger’s new national anthem, and has long been cherished by aficionados for its unique blend of traditional Nigerien melodies and synth experimentation. Mamman's music embodies a sense of intimacy, echoing the presence of a solo artist in the room with the listener. This album is the result of a serendipitous meeting at the Nyege Nyege Festival in Uganda. Both artists shared a residency and studio space, which led to long recording sessions together over the course of two weeks, capturing the organic fusion of Mamman's synth melodies and Tropikal Camel's percussive electronic beats. Despite their divergent backgrounds and ages, Mamman at 73 and Tropikal Camel at 44, they found equilibrium in their collaborative process. ‘Nijerusalem’ pays homage to the warm synth sounds of the 80s while infusing them with an African electronic aesthetic. Mamman's music, rooted in Nigerien folk traditions, finds new life in this sonic exploration, resonating with authenticity and innovation. Both Mamman Sani and Tropikal Camel draw from rich and diverse cultural backgrounds, creating a dialogue of cultural exchange and mutual respect. Mamman's heritage, with roots in the Hausa and Tuareg tribes, intersects with Tropikal Camel’s own North African and Middle Eastern roots and musical interests. In "Nomadic", Mamman Sani captures the vibrant journey of rural nomads through a signature Nigerien swing rhythm. “Sultan Umnaru’s Trip" is a sonic narrative of a tribal leader's expedition during the French colonial era, enriched by North African percussion and live bass, reflecting the intensity of the journey. With its waltz-like cadence, exploring the traditional Touareg rhythm found in countless folk songs across Niger, "Touareg Spaceship” beautifully encapsulates the cultural essence of the Touareg people, offering listeners a captivating glimpse into their musical heritage. In "Fulani UFO", Mamman Sani explores the rich cultural heritage of the Fulani, a prominent tribe in Niger. Here, Assayag infuses a North African rhythm, incorporating the gimbri instrument commonly found in Moroccan Gnawa and Tunisian Stambeli music. These ritualistic musical traditions, brought to North Africa by West African slaves, serve as ecstatic medicine, enriching the sonic landscape of the song. A tribute to the Songhai people, "Sonray Wedding Song" is inspired by a typical song sung at a river bank wedding. Which leads us neatly to “Venusian Lady", a universal ode to love, bridging cultures and origins, with Mamman's heartfelt composition, originally recorded as instrumental 50 years ago, marking its debut in a vocal rendition, sung in both English and Hausa. The urgent "Toil, Sweat & Sun'' intertwines poignant samples with futuristic disco elements, reflecting on the solidarity shown under Niger’s colonial rule. Closing the album, "Nomadic" is transformed into an electronic dub “version”, blending pulsating basslines and reverberating echoes to create a mesmerising sonic landscape. On ‘Nijerusalem’, Mamman Sani and Tropikal Camel's collaboration invite us into their timeless and intimate, minimalist sound world.

Strut proudly presents the first official remastered reissue of the funk/Afro classic, Lafayette Afro Rock Band's 'Soul Makossa' from 1973.

Strut proudly presents the first official remastered reissue of Lafayette Afro Rock Band's elusive funk/Afro original album, 'Malik,' originally released in 1974.

Strut introduces a pioneering new compilation 'A Dancefloor In Ndola,' curated by revered East African DJ, Kampire. Forging her reputation through memorable sets for the Nyege Nyege Festival in Uganda over the last decade, Kampire now tours worldwide and is celebrated for her brilliantly curated sets spanning the full range of African music styles from the ‘70s and ‘80s to the present day. Although born in Kenya to Ugandan parents, Kampire spent her formative years in Ndola, Zambia. ‘A Dancefloor In Ndola’ is inspired by artists and songs that formed part of her soundtrack during that time. “It is important for me to continually reference Africa’s own musical history,” she explains. “At 17, I didn’t pick up on my Dad’s music but now I love and collect those records. I’m constantly referencing them in my music sets today. I love that feeling of shared nostalgia where people recognise a song they haven’t heard in a long time. It is a touchstone for me when I’m playing.” The compilation flows through different East African and South African genres from Congolese rumba and soukous to 1980s township bubblegum and the rich guitar-led sounds of Zambian kalindula. “There are styles of music on the compilation which are often considered unsophisticated from rural areas. I and other contemporary African artists and DJs draw inspiration from them; it is part of what makes us ourselves.” Kampire also shines the spotlight on many incredible women in African music from the ‘80s, including Congolese legends like Pembey Sheiro, Feza Shamamba and Princesse Mansia M’bila to V-Mash and Di Groovy Girls from South Africa.

"Sandman has added South Indian music to the genre-bending mix, along with funk grooves and nods to the Heath Robinson analog-synth adventures of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the 1950s and 1960s" ⭐️ All About Jazz (UK) ⭐️ “The Sandman Project speaks the universal language of…global pop” ⭐️ Bayern Radio 7.4/10 (DE) ⭐️ “An exhilarating ten-track oeuvre, an evocative, borderless potpourri of global surf 'n' turf styles with a jazz ethos" ⭐️ Greedy For Best (DE) ⭐️ “It pivots around the character of Mulatu Astatke and the Fleet Foxes with winds and guitar and a little electronic touch from Brian Eno” ⭐️ DJ Magazine (ES) ⭐️ “This outfit is a jack of all trades and, on this evidence, a master of them all too” ⭐️ Pipelines Magazine (UK) ⭐️ “Brilliant album, will playlist on my PBB Radio show” ⭐️ Laurent Garnier (FR) ⭐️ Sandman Project’s long awaited debut album Where Did You Go? is a borderless amalgam of brass heavy sounds, a document of a band whose musical tendencies mimic their open-minded ethic where Ethio- jazz, Afrobeat, American soul music and psychedelic, Mediterranean funk traverse. Led by guitarist and composer Tal Sandman, Tel Aviv based Sandman Projects’s last release was in 2018 on their debut EP, their only existing recording. Six years later and it is no surprise this expansive work is positively brimming with an ocean of ideas, rooted in jazz, exceptionally crafted and boasting a myriad of musical pivots with a subtle but crucial production and synth touch by producer Tomer Baruch. Absolutely key to this new recording and Tal’s adult musical upbringing and education is the ongoing influence of saxophonist Abate Barihun, sometimes known as the Ethiopian John Coltrane who is an Ethiopian Jew who emigrated to Israel in 1999. Whilst he doesn’t feature directly on the record, Tal has long been mentored and stewarded by him and she affirms that “his inspiration continues to play a crucial role in my creative process.” And so, to the album’s title track Where Did you Go which oozes film- noir with Tal’s omnipresent Tizta sound using the Tezeta scales from Ethiopia dictating the mood whilst synths transcend and build an immersive soundscape something akin to Mulatu Astake jamming with the Fleet Foxes with Brian Eno-esque electronic manipulation. The Sandman project line up comprises of 5 core musicians with Tal Sandman on electric guitar, Tal Avraham playing trumpet, Tal Eyal on percussion, Noam Cherchie on drums and Ariel Harrosh on bass. Additional synth and organ provided by producer Tomer Baruch and guest vocalist Dafna Shilon joins on the album closer The Other Side. The group all live in Tel Aviv with Tal living in the Jaffa neighborhood for 12 years and the official birth-place of the Sandman Project. Jaffa is a diverse urban region where Arabs, Jews, Christians and many more live harmoniously together and it’s here where Tal has been active in building community ties and where she has recently started learning Arabic. The recent and shocking violence and war in Israel and Palestine has strengthened the bonds within the Jaffa community and a sense of unity and desire for peace has pervaded echoing Tal’s wish for peace, for real and imagined boundaries to dissolve and war and survival to be replaced with compassion and humanity. Jaffa is also Tal’s place of respite and spiritual place of being, where she returned to after significant musical and creative excursions to Goa in India (where she formed the Goa Afrobeat Band) and to London where she created a branch of the Sandman Project. Tal’s recent trip to Goa is effectively soundtracked on the album opener Karnataka, which borrows from the east, both the spirit and it’s drumming, inspired by a South Indian wedding ceremony. Trumpets and Tal’s incessant but measured guitar riffing using Indian scales transcends into a beautiful soundtrack of jazz and psychedelia energized with a propulsive funk. Temptation & Figs reverberates with a sly groove, an organ filled and chilled groove given a life affirming vibe with it repetitive and harmonized vocal pass building to a trumpet crescendo. The cine flavoured edge of Sandman Project goes wide screen on The X Files as bizarre electronic gurgling remiss of early BBC Radiophonic recordings intertwine with horn stabs and a percussion solo. Further vintage synth excursions repeat on Cauda Equina, with Tal’s heavy fretting giving the track a funk feel, and a dreamy one as the trumpet builds. Dafna Shilon’s entrance at the end of the album on The Other Side is unique in that it brings a skank to proceedings and is the only lyrical song from the collection. Six years in the waiting, and with plentiful personal and collective transformation giving Where Did You Go? a deeper sense of geography and global nuance, the new sound of Sandman Project is rich, porous and dreamy and essentially, full of hope.

Recorded in early 1971, Curtis/Live! finds Curtis Mayfield in top form at the intimate Greenwich Village club The Bitter End. With veterans from Chicago's soul and jazz scene, Mayfield runs through a superb setlist of Impressions classics ("Gypsy Woman," "People Get Ready"), gems from his first solo LP ("We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue," "The Makings of You") and fierce originals that would make their recording debut here ("I Plan To Stay A Believer," "Stare And Stare" and "Stone Junkie").

As author Lloyd Sachs writes in the liner notes for this vinyl reissue, "All of the songs are lovingly reworked – in some cases stretched out and in others, brightened with humor. The band redefines groove via the West African polyrhythms of conga and bongo great Henry Gibson and the intertwined guitars of Mayfield – whose dulcet, vocal-like tone was a revolution in and of itself – and Craig McMullen. The group creates excitement through tension and release, through building up and letting go."

Curtis/Live! was originally issued on Mayfield's own Curtom label just before his second studio album, 1971's Roots, and his influential Super Fly soundtrack. While the singer would continue to establish himself as one of the key voices of his generation, the powerful anthems and in-the-pocket perfection on this double-LP live set demonstrate how brilliant Curtis truly was – a master class in restraint and fearless expression.

Multidisciplinary artist Jermay Michael Gabriel and producer Giovanni Isgrò team up as Plethor X to present a debut EP of anti-colonial resistance, an unfolding experiment in self-determination. Colonial trauma has no linear trajectory, and neither does memory. It seeps and sinks into the fibres without a temporal pattern, crossing generations, back and forth between past, present and future. Plethor X channel the multifaceted dimensions of such phenomena, exorcising trauma through sound, embracing cultural legacies and collective memories as a form of healing. The driving force behind the record is the Habesha musical tradition, distinctive of Jermay's childhood - samples of the masinko, an Ethiopian and Eritrean one-stringed instrument, are used extensively - transposed into rhythmic structures onto which Isgrò playfully grafts elements of footwork, ghetto house, as well as gqom and singeli—a space-time gateway of complicity and experimentation. Plethor X’s soundscapes are Afro-futurist ecosystems of explicit messages—'Don't use the N word’ is distinctly heard in ‘Negro’—coalesced with frenzied percussive textures built through destruction. With ‘Bet’ we experience Muna Mussie's hypnotic recitation of Tigrinya words drawn from a set of nursery rhymes and words emblematic of Eritrean culture. The voice of Mussie, who shares the same origins as Jermay, serves here as a vehicle to express a certain identity melancholia, the repetitive mode sounding like a soothing process of reconciliation. PAN-affiliated producer STILL makes his own contribution by reworking Plethor X’s material in 'Fendika', raising the rhythmic tension with his signature colourful, plugged-in dancehall style. That with Europe is a bridge to an indefensible continent, with a predatory, plundering nature, sold as 'civilisation'. In ‘What You Mean’, Isgrò and Jermay conspire against their own Eurocentrism, regurgitating it from within. The package is complemented by remixes from OOH-sounds affiliated artists nobile, Losssy (formerly unperson), Glass and WEȽ∝KER. Their brilliant versions of 'Bet' are a further investigation of the evocative potential of Mussie's voice and expression of the collective nature of this project.

Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band, the mysterious steel pan outfit hailing from Hamburg, Germany have amassed a cult following around the globe. With a slew of classic 7”s and three critically acclaimed full length albums, they set a high bar for themselves, one they clearly intend on pushing even higher with this new offering. On their fourth album BRSB, Bacao are back with more of the same, but more of the same with them is inherently different. Covering songs that span genres and range from mega hits to underground album cuts, they make them their own with their unique approach to the traditional steel pans of Trinidad and Tobago. While part of the allure of a new Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band album is finding out what covers they do it is equally intriguing to see what original tunes they cooked upland this record is foul of stand out originals. The album opener, “In The Crosshairs” is a rough and tough mid tempo head nodder while both “Grilled” & “Treasure Quest” pick up the tempo with heavy African Funk influences on both. Bacao goes deep with “Hazy Memories”, a bass heavy slow burner that walks a line between hypnotic and hype. All these originals stand as testament that the term “cover band” is a shoe that could never fit Bacao. However, in the tradition of steel pan music, they do a heavy amount of covers. This time around there is a big West Coast Hip Hop influence with covers of Game & 50 Cent’s “How We Do”, Dr Dre & Snoop Dogg’s “Nuthin But A G Thang”, and Tupac’s “Got My Mind Made Up” all of which take on new energy and lend themselves to the BRSB steel treatment. Bacao puts another certified dancefloor filler on their resume with their cover of Claudja Barry’s uber Disco classic “Love For The Sake Of Love” which they flip into a dubbed out affair aptly changing even the title to “Love For The Sake Of Dub”. Pulling from the contemporary smash hit section of Hop Hop they cover Drake’s “Hotline Bling” and “Love$ick” by Mura Masa & A$AP Rocky. Then they go very unexpected with “Stranger Things Theme” where they take the synth heavy theme song to the hit show and give it a more hypnotizing tone than the original.By the time BRSB is through, Bacao has taken the listener on a journey spanning a myriad of energies, tempos, and moods while keeping it all under one umbrella. For all that, these songs are alive, and they will be taken out of the context of this album and sewn into the fabric of DJ sets around the globe for many years to come. Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band continues building their legacy and pushing the boundaries of steel pan music forward with another rock solid musical offering. Enjoy.

Connecting Wasulu hunter music, griot praises, Senufo pastoral dances, Fula and Mandingo repertoire alongside Western psychedelia, blues and afro-beat, Zani Diabaté’s Super Djata Band was among Mali’s top orchestras of the 1980s. On their 1982 album, Diabaté enshrines himself within the pantheon of mythical West African guitarists, hypnotically picking through eight vivid compositions on his path to godhead status.

The recording of Earth Blossom, the John Betsch Society's one and only album, seems something of an enigma nowadays. For even though Nashville is clearly one of the towns in the US with the highest number of recording studios, who would have thought that the capital of country music would give birth to one of the forgotten masterpieces of 1970s spiritual jazz. The path leading to the album starts in 1963 when John Betsch, originally from Jacksonville in Florida, arrives in Nashville to study at Frisk University. He is a young drummer and joins Bob Holmes trio. Holmes is one of the towns major jazz organists and pianists; he becomes Betschs mentor and, over the space of two years, John will play alternately with him and with the trumpeter Louis Smiths group. However, in 1965, John leaves town to go to the prestigious Berkeley University in Boston and do a two-year course along with his fellow debutants with names like John Abercrombie, Ernie Watts and Alan Broadbent. Two years later, he is invited by a pianist friend, Billy Chilf, to join the legendary singer/songwriter Tim Hardins group. Just after Woodstock, John Betsch and Tim record a psychedelic album Columbia will never release together with the members of the future group Oregon: Colin Walcott, Glen Moore, Paul McCandles and his friend Billy Chilf. But he soon leaves this group to return to Nashville where he hooks up again with his friend Bob Holmes. Two years later, he is accepted on Archie Shepp and Max Roachs famous course at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMASS) and for the next four years he participates in this collective of intellectuals and musicians under the aegis of the two masters.

During this period he returns to Nashville to form his Society whose music is obviously influenced by the Afrocentric ideas of the UMASS student and political movement. However, the album, recorded in one day and in one take, also bears the hallmark of their generations psychedelic experiences, and in the themes and playing of the musicians we can hear a less violent form of music than the radical free jazz of New York or Chicago. Nature and environmental themes are the inspiration behind tracks touched by the spirit of Coltrane but also of Flower Power.

After Amherst, John Betsch joins Marion Browns group in 1976, leaves Tennessee for good and makes his home in New York over the next ten years or so. He plays and records with Dollar Brand, Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre and many others, before heading off to France. He has lived in Paris for the last twenty years and played in Steve Lacy, Mal Waldron and Archie Shepp bands, as well as forming groups of his own. He now lives in Paris and plays with many musicians/bands.

オリジナルは$4,000で取引されたエチオピア産ジャズの77年金字塔的傑作『Tche Belew』を残したことでも知られるレジェンド中のレジェンドによる最新作！エチオピークの重鎮Mulatu Astatkeとも仕事を共にした伝説的ジャズ・キーボード奏者のHailu Mergia。2016年に録音していた秘蔵ライブ・レコーディング音源『Pioneer Works Swing (Live)』が〈Awesome Tapes From Africa〉より堂々アナウンス。2016年7月1日、ブルックリンの由緒ある非営利文化センター〈Pioneer Works〉で行われた彼らの激しいライヴを美しく捉えています。エネルギッシュかつ遊び心たっぷりに、エチオピアの様々なレパートリーから、ハーモニーとリズムの面白さを次々と引き出した現代のエチオ・ジャズの新たなる金字塔！

Black Truffle is pleased to announce the first vinyl reissue of Trancedance, a wild slice of Swedish Afro-fusion from Christer Bothén, originally released in 1984. A major figure in Swedish jazz and improvised music since the 1970s, often heard on bass clarinet and tenor sax, Bothen studied doso n’koni (the large six-stringed ‘hunter’s harp’ of the Wasulu) in Mali in 1971-2 before turning to the guinbri (the three-stringed lute of the Gnawa/Gnauoua) in Marakesh later in the decade. In between, he performed extensively with Don Cherry during his Organic Music Society period and taught Cherry the doso n’koni. In the later 70s and 80s he worked with the most important figures in the distinctive Swedish jazz-rock-world fusion scene, joining Archimedes Badkar for their African-influenced Tre and participating in Bengt Berger’s legendary Bitter Funeral Beer Band. Many of the musicians who played on the Bitter Funeral Beer Band’s ECM LP (including Berger on drums, Anita Livstrand on voice and percussion and Tord Bengstsson on piano, violin and guitar) joined Bothén for one of the sessions that produced Trancedance, the first release under his own name, dedicated to his compositions. The other session introduced his seven-piece group Bolon Bata, heard on the second track of each side. The title track opens the album with the rubbery buzzing strings of the doso n’goni playing a hypnotic ten beat pattern, soon joined by bass and piano before the entire nine-piece group kicks in with a rollicking Afro-jazz workout, Berger’s drums driving an intricate, winding melodic line played by the horns with Mattias Helden’s cello throwing in pizzicato slides and smears. Bothén then takes centre stage on tenor sax, soloing with a wide, vibrating tone and moving seamlessly from soaring melodies to guttural stutters. After a return to the composed horn lines and a solo from Elsie Petrén on alto sax, the piece builds to an ecstatic conclusion of yelping voices and handclaps, gradually simmering down to return to the solo doso n’koni where it began. The hypnotic sounds of the hunter’s harp carries over to ‘Mimouna’, where it is joined by Bothen’s overdubbed guinbri. The piece develops into a haunting whispered and sung invocation, gradually building momentum until the organic textures of strings, voices, and hand percussion are ruptured by Lennart Söderlund’s distorted guitar, which brings an unmistakable touch of 1984 to the otherwise timeless sound. Joined by chicken scratch guitar and increasingly dominated by the insistent clang of three of Bolon Bata’s members on karqab (a kind of cast-iron castanet), the grove develops frenetically. The B side opens with the multi-part epic ‘9+10 Moving Pictures for the Ear’, at over 16 minutes the record’s longest piece. Though Bothen is heard only on horns on this piece, the hypnotic repeating bass line carries on the first side’s link to African musical traditions. Using an expanded 16-piece ensemble, the music balances untethered improvisation with carefully arranged passages of knotty ensemble playing that at points suggest Mingus, Moacir Santos or some of the ambitious post-free work being done in the same years by figures like David Murray or Henry Threadgill. The piece ends with a triumphant passage of looping unison melody reminiscent of the Scandinavian folk explorations of Arbete och Fritid (whose Kjell Westling is heard on bass clarinet and soprano sax here). The sound of Bjorn Lundqvist’s fretless bass introduces the odd left turn made by the record’s final track, a spaced-out expedition into bluesy horn lines and distant guitar atmospherics set to a semi-reggae beat, perfumed by the core Bolon Bata group and bearing the appropriate title of ‘The Horizon Stroller’. A must for fans of the Swedish scene around groups like Arbete och Fritid and Archimedes Badkar, as well as any listener who has been seduced by Louis Moholo’s Spirits Rejoice!, The Brotherhood of Breath, or, more recently, the guinbri grooves of Natural Information Society, Trancedance is a lost classic ripe for rediscovery.

A disciple of mambo innovator Perez Prado, the Cuban-born Modesto Duran was a pivotal figure in Latin dance music’s transitionary mid-century period. His gentle slaps can be heard across dozens of 1950s mega-sellers, from Esquivel to Belafonte, Eartha Kitt to Lena Horne. On his 1960 solo debut, Duran gathers a who’s who of conga-men, including Mongo Santamaría, Willie Bobo, and Juan Cheda, delivering a cinematic and percussive melange of afro-cuban, cha cha, and exotic jazz styles for the discerning listener.

Strut are proud to announce the first ever internationally released new studio album by one of the all-time legends of Nigerian music, Orlando Julius, in a mouth-watering new collaboration with London super-group The Heliocentrics. At his club residency in Ibadan, Orlando Julius was one of the very first to begin fusing US R&B with traditional highlife during the mid-‘60s with his Modern Aces band. His ‘Super Afro Soul’ album from ’66 set the blueprint for a whole generation of Afrobeat and Afro funk stars and, in an illustrious career, Julius met and played with Louis Armstrong, The Crusaders, Hugh Masekela and Lamont Dozier among others, famously co-composing the classic ‘Going Back To My Roots’ in 1979 whilst based in the USA. For ‘Jaiyede Afro’, Julius takes us back to his own roots, revisiting several compositions from his early years which have never previously been recorded. The title track recalls his experiences as a boy: “My mother would go to group meetings with other women. They would sing together and play drums, I would play along with them and we would sing this song together.” Infectious chant ‘Omo Oba Blues’ is a traditional song sung at Julius’ school which he re-arranged in 1965 for his Modern Aces band. The epic Afrobeat jam ‘Be Counted’ stems from his years in the USA: "This was written around 1976 while I was living on the Westcoast. I did start recording it for the ‘Sisi Sade’ album around 1985 but it was never finished." Other tracks include ‘Buje Buje’ and ‘Aseni’, both re-worked arrangements from his rare ‘Orlando Julius and The Afro Sounders’ album from 1973. Recorded at the Heliocentrics’ fully analogue HQ in North London, the band follow their memorable collaborations with Mulatu Astatke and Lloyd Miller by taking Orlando’s sound into new, progressive directions, retaining the raw grit of his early work and adding psychedelic touches and adventurous new arrangements. They also contribute live favourite, the James Brown cover ‘In The Middle’ and a series of memorable shorter interludes.

Forest Law's debut album, "Zero," is a vibrant journey blending Balearic funk with urban Tropicalia, showcasing his adept guitar playing, old-school sampling, and UK-styled beats alongside his mellow yet sombre vocals. Recorded across eclectic locations from Icelandic fish net factories to a garden shed in Romford, this innovative release marks a new chapter for the multi-instrumentalist producer. Released in collaboration with the UK home for jazz and electronic sounds, Total Refreshment Centre, Zero is Forest Law’s first release since his debut EP on Brownswood Recordings four years ago, marking a new and exciting chapter for the up-and-coming talent. Crafted over seven years, "Zero" is deeply influenced by Law's experiences, from immersive stays in Porto where he delved into Portuguese music to an artist residency in a remote Icelandic fishing village. The album was finished, and recorded in his garden shed in Romford, East London. It’s a beautiful juxtaposition about a boy from Essex, who fell in love with international music, discovered the world, and then produced a musical treatise about his adventures from his shed.

Forest Law's debut album, "Zero," is a vibrant journey blending Balearic funk with urban Tropicalia, showcasing his adept guitar playing, old-school sampling, and UK-styled beats alongside his mellow yet sombre vocals. Recorded across eclectic locations from Icelandic fish net factories to a garden shed in Romford, this innovative release marks a new chapter for the multi-instrumentalist producer. Released in collaboration with the UK home for jazz and electronic sounds, Total Refreshment Centre, Zero is Forest Law’s first release since his debut EP on Brownswood Recordings four years ago, marking a new and exciting chapter for the up-and-coming talent. Crafted over seven years, "Zero" is deeply influenced by Law's experiences, from immersive stays in Porto where he delved into Portuguese music to an artist residency in a remote Icelandic fishing village. The album was finished, and recorded in his garden shed in Romford, East London. It’s a beautiful juxtaposition about a boy from Essex, who fell in love with international music, discovered the world, and then produced a musical treatise about his adventures from his shed.

MESTIZX is Bolivian-born singer and multi-medium performer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and renowned Chicago expat jazz drummer Frank Rosaly's debut album as co-composers, arrangers and musicians. Partners in both marriage and art, the Amsterdam-based Ferragutti and Rosaly dove into the sounds of their respective ancestral roots in Bolivia, Brazil, and Puerto Rico to create a deeply personal meditation on decolonization and the defiant power of ritual and protest. They chose the title MESTIZX – a non-gendered version of the sometimes slurred Spanish colonial word for a “mixed person” - as a means of both challenging and embracing the liminality of their identities and artistic practices. Rosaly says: “I grew up quite Puerto Rican in my home, but was taught to mask it outside my home. I wasn’t allowed to speak Spanish, so the drums eventually became my language, secretly tying together my own feeling of connection to mi tierra. This record is the first time I actively give voice to the nuance within myself, allowing me to take ownership of this in-between, which is what this album communicates for me… There is this unusual place that exists between these two cultures, of which I am both. There is a complex story in that sliver of in-betweenness, worthy of giving voice to all of us that live in-between.” Ferragutti adds: “My personal understanding is one that stems from being placed in between lineages that carry the colonizer and colonized, the oppressor and oppressed, the demon and the angel… thus by definition is tied to post-colonial social constructs which we as Bolivians have to step in, like a 500 year novel that goes on and on… We have access to many memories and traditions, but not really, because we don’t fully belong to any of those… This makes us feel we're in a constant state of being the “visitors” and “outsiders.” On one hand, we are never truly part of one lineage. On the other hand, it makes us a travelers of worlds, storytellers in between multiple languages, cultures, and worldviews. We chose MESTIZX for this work as an act of recognizing the mixed state of being as a difficult and yet powerful one.” The album was produced and recorded primarily at International Anthem Studios in Chicago, where Ferragutti and Rosaly were joined by a community of musicians and beloved friends including Matt Lux, Avreeayl Ra, Ben LaMar Gay, Daniel Villarreal, Bill MacKay, Rob Frye, and Mikel Patrick Avery, with addditional contributions from Chris Doyle, Guilherme Granado, Viktor Le Givens and Fredy Velásquez. The music creatively infuses Latin rhythmic patterns and oblong swing from pre-and post-colonial Latin America into a collision of avant jazz, art punk, Chicago post-rock, bomba, plena, cumbia, Andean, minimal, electronica, and folk. A wholly original but undeniably universal sound – both of-the-moment and alluringly futuristic - MESTIZX contains points of reference and resonance for fans of Juana Molina, Café Tacvba, Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln, Liquid Liquid, Arto Lindsay, As Mercenarias, The Ex, Tortoise, Tom Zé, Elza Soares, La Mecanica Popular... It’s a vast, vibrant and encompassing spectrum of sounds, but at its core MESTIZX is a lucidly conscious collection of auto-biographical statements from Ferragutti & Rosaly on the deeply personalized effects of colonialism on geography, history, and identity. Despite its heavy subject matter, however, MESTIZX finds a lifeline in communal, celebratory, soul-bearing and movement-inducing music.

MESTIZX is Bolivian-born singer and multi-medium performer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and renowned Chicago expat jazz drummer Frank Rosaly's debut album as co-composers, arrangers and musicians. Partners in both marriage and art, the Amsterdam-based Ferragutti and Rosaly dove into the sounds of their respective ancestral roots in Bolivia, Brazil, and Puerto Rico to create a deeply personal meditation on decolonization and the defiant power of ritual and protest. They chose the title MESTIZX – a non-gendered version of the sometimes slurred Spanish colonial word for a “mixed person” - as a means of both challenging and embracing the liminality of their identities and artistic practices. Rosaly says: “I grew up quite Puerto Rican in my home, but was taught to mask it outside my home. I wasn’t allowed to speak Spanish, so the drums eventually became my language, secretly tying together my own feeling of connection to mi tierra. This record is the first time I actively give voice to the nuance within myself, allowing me to take ownership of this in-between, which is what this album communicates for me… There is this unusual place that exists between these two cultures, of which I am both. There is a complex story in that sliver of in-betweenness, worthy of giving voice to all of us that live in-between.” Ferragutti adds: “My personal understanding is one that stems from being placed in between lineages that carry the colonizer and colonized, the oppressor and oppressed, the demon and the angel… thus by definition is tied to post-colonial social constructs which we as Bolivians have to step in, like a 500 year novel that goes on and on… We have access to many memories and traditions, but not really, because we don’t fully belong to any of those… This makes us feel we're in a constant state of being the “visitors” and “outsiders.” On one hand, we are never truly part of one lineage. On the other hand, it makes us a travelers of worlds, storytellers in between multiple languages, cultures, and worldviews. We chose MESTIZX for this work as an act of recognizing the mixed state of being as a difficult and yet powerful one.” The album was produced and recorded primarily at International Anthem Studios in Chicago, where Ferragutti and Rosaly were joined by a community of musicians and beloved friends including Matt Lux, Avreeayl Ra, Ben LaMar Gay, Daniel Villarreal, Bill MacKay, Rob Frye, and Mikel Patrick Avery, with addditional contributions from Chris Doyle, Guilherme Granado, Viktor Le Givens and Fredy Velásquez. The music creatively infuses Latin rhythmic patterns and oblong swing from pre-and post-colonial Latin America into a collision of avant jazz, art punk, Chicago post-rock, bomba, plena, cumbia, Andean, minimal, electronica, and folk. A wholly original but undeniably universal sound – both of-the-moment and alluringly futuristic - MESTIZX contains points of reference and resonance for fans of Juana Molina, Café Tacvba, Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln, Liquid Liquid, Arto Lindsay, As Mercenarias, The Ex, Tortoise, Tom Zé, Elza Soares, La Mecanica Popular... It’s a vast, vibrant and encompassing spectrum of sounds, but at its core MESTIZX is a lucidly conscious collection of auto-biographical statements from Ferragutti & Rosaly on the deeply personalized effects of colonialism on geography, history, and identity. Despite its heavy subject matter, however, MESTIZX finds a lifeline in communal, celebratory, soul-bearing and movement-inducing music.

Richard Wolfhouse comes through on Trule with his debut release, Percussion Edits Vol. 1. Three tracks indebted to 1970s African percussion records and 2000s minimal techno. Long, winding percussion workouts woven with modular synthesis and drum machines primed for dancefloors.

An album that sounds like The Menahan Street Band playing in a tropical jungle, at dawn, right at the point when the first rays of the sun penetrate the dark depths of the forest. During the 2022 summer of natural disasters, under an unprecedented heatwave, and haunted by news reports of ancient relics, sunken ships, and hunger stones resurfacing as rivers dried-up all-over Europe, Alex Figueira started to hear uncanny metallic vibrations and eerie melodies of untraceable origins, day and night. He recalls nightmares of winged creatures inside timeless structures of Escherian architectures playing cosmic instruments amidst tropical storms and acid rains. As the visions came more often, his wife Hester reported that he babbled during his sleep about South American demon Yurupari. Soon, Alex found himself in a sleepless state and decided to cleanse the studio, with hallowed rites and the intense burning of Palo Santo. After almost burning the studio down, he turned to his neighbourhood’s most experienced psychic, seeking answers. He was told there were “cosmic entities” trying to manifest a message “too complex for us to understand in this dimension” and the only way he could find peace was to deliver those messages in a decipherable form. It was then he decided to transmute his hallucinations into music, an all-or-nothing cathartic solution. Alex entered a feverish dream, fuelled by the kaleidoscopic motion of the cosmos, ancient meteor showers, and visions of forgotten interstellar South American gods. He remembers very little of the work, but the outcome is this record. Entirely composed, recorded, produced, and mixed in a frenetic nine-day studio stint. How the experts describe it: ”Just when outernational vinyl vampires thought they had it all sewn up, the metronomic makeshift magician known as Alex Figueira unravels the entire fabric of your record collection to expose a gaping hole where PUNKUMBIA and Transplant-Tropicalia should be. Reducing an expansive palette of influences to a recipe that tastes wildly exotic but comfortably over-familiar, Alex’s roles as both scavenger and chef, bookend a whole ensemble of other highly adept musical personalities in between. Discover this record NOW, or wait until all your friends (or enemies) recommend it to you later.”